This Week: As Former President Trump’s Legal Peril Grows, MAGA Politicians and Activists Use the Courts and Legislatures to Try to Undermine Elections
This week, revelations from the investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election “suggest peril could be growing for Trump and his associates.” In the investigation of Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the election results in Arizona, the secretary of state’s office was subpoenaed and former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers, a former MAGA supporter, acknowledged that the FBI interviewed him on the matter. In Georgia, one of the grand juries convened this week is expected to consider potential criminal indictments against Trump for alleged “interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.”
In the case stemming from whether Trump obstructed justice and willfully retained national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department disclosed previously redacted evidence of documents being moved to allegedly keep them hidden from investigators. Also this week, Trump requested the trial be delayed until the 2024 presidential election is over.
Congressman Bryan Steil, a MAGA supporter from Wisconsin, went to Georgia to announce a wide-ranging bill that would threaten voting access, make it more difficult to register voters, and make it easier to hide campaign spending.
In Michigan, the special prosecutor investigating an alleged MAGA “conspiracy to seize voting machines” after the 2020 presidential election asked the courts to determine who can access voting machines. The judge in the case announced this week that she will rule on the matter shortly.
In Arizona, election conspiracy theorist Jennifer Wright, who ran the Election Integrity Unit in the office of former Attorney General Mark Brnovich, attacked drafts of election procedure changes by current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to protect poll workers and voters from harassment. Wright is currently trying to overturn the results of the 2022 state attorney general election.
In Georgia, MAGA supporters asked a judge to force the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to seat Jason Frazier on the County Board of Elections, despite trying to kick approximately 10,000 voters in the county off the voter rolls last year. The board “has the power to cancel or suspend registrations of voters who face challenges” from MAGA activists like Frazier.
In Nevada, MAGA supporters advanced their recently filed lawsuit challenging a new state law “designed to protect election officials from intimidation, harassment and election interference,” while in North Carolina, a judge scheduled a conference to determine how a lawsuit challenging the state’s 2018 voter identification law will move forward. On the legislative side, MAGA supporters in the General Assembly continued pushing legislation to make North Carolina the “strictest state” for absentee voting.
